The Time of Women by Elena Chizhova

 genre: historical fiction

In 1950s Russia, Antonina and her daughter are on their own until they manage to secure space in a communal apartment that they share with three elderly women, the "grandmothers."  These three women have lived through the chaos of the first century of Russian life and its horrors and challenges have affected them all.  As they help to raise Antonina's mute daughter while she works in a factory, readers are given a portrait of the scarcity and difficulty that women, in particular, faced as Russia recovered from the difficult years of WWII.  It's a female-centered story that allows the minutiae of daily life to take center stage as the plot revolves around obtaining enough food, managing the difficulties of housing (which is completely run by the state), and obsessing over what life used to be like versus what it's like "now."  As the grannies reminisce and problem solve, there is much talk of pre-war/post-war, old vs new, city vs country.  So much to worry about but when tragedy lurks, Antonina and her daughter count on the grandmothers to help them see it through.

There is good stuff in here, there is.  It's revealing and really does amplify the strength of women to handle whatever nonsense or catastrophe needs to be handled.  But the narrative form is really tricky - you are always having to guess who the narrator is (sometimes it's the same as the chapter heading, sometimes now) and there is a lot of dream sequences that are probably useful in some way but for me felt really distracting.  I don't think it was a lyrical or beautiful translation, which was a bummer. I've read exquisitely translated Russian before and while it's never really happy, it doesn't necessarily feel as frumpy as this - but, maybe, that's the point. Their lives WERE bedraggled and exhausted.  It just made it a bit of a trudge to read.